by Moira Katson
“I’ve doubted every day for years,” Almeric said finally.
“What?” She looked back sharply. He was all blurred, and she dashed the back of her hand across her cheeks to wipe the tears away. “You have?”
“Every day,” he repeated. “But I looked at you, and I remembered why we’re doing this. You’ve never let anything stop you, not ever. We should have died that night. I didn’t know what to do, and you grabbed my hand and just started running. I told you that you were crazy to want to stay, I wanted to run away and let him keep ruling, keep executing nobles for nothing. I—”
“You were ten,” Alleyne interrupted. Her heart ached at the shame in his voice. This was her big brother, the boy who’d taught her to make fishing nets to sell so they could buy food to eat, who’d stolen for her, fought for her, taught her to use her fists. Somewhere along the way, while she hadn’t been looking, he’d turned into a man—but even when he’d been a boy, he’d been her protector. “You kept us safe. There’s no shame in being scared.”
“You weren’t scared,” he insisted.
“I was seven.”
He talked over her. “I was never the brave one. I doubt all the time, Alleyne, every day. We still haven’t found a way into the palace. We still don’t know how many guards he has, or if there’ll be a feast that night. But we’ll find our way through that just like we found a way through everything else.”
I’m terrified. No, she couldn’t say that. She bit back the words. “What if we aren’t ready?”
“It’s going to be over soon. You were right, it’ll be chaos in the palace for the ambassador’s visit.” His voice steadied her. “Now, eat. You need to eat, and rest. We have to keep training tomorrow.” He smiled at her, and said the words he said every night: “Tomorrow, you’ll definitely get through the door.”
Chapter Three
The river was her favorite place in the city, and it was best in the evenings. Alleyne reveled in the crush of people moving this way and that, haggling over fish hauled fresh from the river, gulping down hot bowls of soup or sipping mint tea in the cafes that perched precariously out over the river on stilted platforms. The smell of the evening’s bread wafted from every house, and children ran underfoot to greet their parents, back from a day’s labor at the quarries or the smithies or the docks. Beyond it all, the river shone with a million points of light from the setting sun, and the heavy bells tolled twilight, the fleeting few hours that belonged to Lycoris, when anything might happen.
Almeric hated it. He walked through the crowds with his shoulders hunched and his hand clutched around the neck of his purse.
“They can just slit the bottom open, you know.” Alleyne grinned up at him.
“I do know,” he said, prickly. “And you shouldn’t.”
“Protecting my purse is a perfectly useful skill.”
“That’s not how you know it.” He glared down at her. It wasn’t just his height that drew people’s gazes when he walked past: with thick brows and a wide jaw, the same bow-shaped mouth as Alleyne, and skin of a deep umber, Almeric was an arresting figure. But it always those eyes that stood out, watchful. Those eyes could go through you like a spear.
Alleyne was used to it. She gave him the same look right back, and ruined it with a grin over her shoulder as she pushed her way ahead.
“I’m serious.” He hurried after her. “Where are you going?”
“Every night you ask me where I’m going, and every night, I’m going to the overlook.” The spar of rock, somehow never mined away, stood as one of the only true landmarks in the ever-shifting world beyond the third wall. Clay-brick buildings might weather to dust or collapse after the rainy season, different neighborhoods rose and fell, but the overlook remained.
Alleyne scrambled up it every night to stare down at the broad avenue of the Imperial Way, a river of its own sort but filled with the carriages and carts of merchants: pretty vegetables piled neatly, bolts of cloth, the gold-painted palanquins of the richest merchants and the more austere conveyances of the nobility, who shunned such obvious displays of wealth
It reminded her what the Aiqasal Empire had once been, and what it could be when the Emperor was dead—for while she might hate him, Alleyne loved the people of this city fiercely. She loved the gulls on the water and the cries of the street vendors, the black-robed priests of Lycoris and the white-robed Elians, the twittering birds and the jumbled houses. Sometimes she even thought she loved the city she lived in now more than the palace she’d grown up in.
She never, never told Almeric that.
In her hurry to reach the overlook before evening fell, her eye almost passed over the two nobles. They slunk quietly through the streets with their expensive hoods drawn up, as if that would help them; the fabric of their cloaks was richer than anything Alleyne had seen in years. She was close, about to duck down an alleyway when Almeric dragged her back.
“Where are you going?”
“After them.” She jerked her head, keeping her voice to a hiss. “Come on.”
“No.” His voice was like stone. “You may have learned to slit purses—against every objection of mine, I might add—but you will not do so while I have a say in it.”
“I’m not going to take their coin!” Alleyne pried his fingers loose from her arm. “Think for a moment: they’re high up, yes? They don’t want to be seen, yes?”
“Yes,” he said cautiously.
“So they’re speaking secrets, or likely to. Secrets about the palace, secrets that might help us get in.” She paused, watching his eyes for the spark of understanding. “Secrets that might induce them to overlook one or two people coming into the palace, or give us a place in their retinues.”
“You think…” He broke off and hurried after her. He kept his voice low. “You think so?”
“Why else would they come here? This is where nobles come when there’s something they don’t want known.”
“If I know nobles, it’s always the same kind of secret.”
Alleyne hid a grin and said nothing. She cherished the moments when Almeric forgot that he was a noble, too. She held out an arm to keep him back as the two nobles slipped into a house along one of the wharfs. She didn’t know the house, but the scent of jasmine and patchouli told its purpose clearly enough: it was a bathhouse, one of many lining the banks of the river.
The baths would be on the side of the building facing the river, kept open to the cool air but shielded with carved screens. The question was which room the men would go to. She needed to know, after all, if she was to overhear anything useful.
They would choose the top floor, Alleyne decided. It wouldn’t be on the first floor, of course, which would hold the parlor and the great vats that heated the water. But it wouldn’t be the second or the third floor, either. These men had had the coin, they didn’t want to be overheard, and they weren’t used to the world beyond the walls of the city, where there were fruit stalls and boarders even on the roofs. She found two holds on the rough limestone wall and began to pull herself up.
“Alleyne. Alleyne!”
She didn’t answer. She could hear Almeric pulling himself up behind her, muttering all the while about constables and getting caught and the pie he’d bought for dinner, and she smiled to herself. Almeric talked a great deal about proper behavior, but he was always tagging along on these adventures.
Laundry hung on thick lines across the roof, and a lemon tree was potted in the corner with a bed of herbs. Scents for the baths, perhaps. With a hiss to Almeric to hurry up, she ran lightly to the other side of the roof to settle down by one of the vents. The men would have waited and haggled over the price—that was practically obligatory, no matter where in the city you were—but they would be up soon. Through the vent, she could see the well-smoothed wooden tubs, draped with fresh linen towels. This must be one of the nicer houses, catering to the merchants who thought themselves overlooked, deserving of the finer things in life; those who were actually well
off would have estates inside the third wall, and those who were rich would use the amenities at their guild halls within the second wall.
The door banged open just as Almeric settled down beside her, and he jumped. Alleyne gave him a look.
“It’s just the servants.”
Indeed, it was. They streamed up the side staircase, bearing bucket after bucket of water, and were gone in surprisingly short order. The steam filtered up through the vent and Alleyne snuggled down gratefully. The night’s chill was already beginning to creep into the air.
Footsteps came clattering up the main stairwell on the other side of the building, the far too loud sound of a bathkeeper’s wooden shoes. Knowing that their buildings were prized for privacy and clandestine deals, bathkeepers preferred not to be accused of eavesdropping on their clients. Of course, Alleyne would bet a copper coin that this bathkeeper would slip her shoes off later and be up the stairs on the sly, but that was of no matter to her.
The woman’s unctuous tones reached them as the main door swung open.
“And here’ll be your baths, my lords. Shall I send some wine and refreshments, perhaps?”
“No. Thank you.” The voice that spoke was curt.
“Perhaps anyone to assist you?” the bathkeeper suggested. “I have a new girl from north of the city, hair like a sunset, very quiet and most accommodating.”
“No.” The sounded annoyed now. “We would be alone.”
“Of course, my lords.” The bathkeeper’s voice said all too clearly what she assumed about the two nobles, but she was gone a moment later, footsteps clattering back down the stairs.
There was a long silence as the men stripped off their clothes, and the faint lapping of water, and an even longer pause after that. Alleyne craned to peer through the vent, and her curiosity was rewarded. She could not see either man, but one of the cloaks had been thrown carelessly to the ground, and the rough glint of the cloak pin was surely a house sigil. She strained to make it out, and shuddered with distaste. It was a two-headed bird with a cat clutched in its talons.
Something to remember, at least. The men had been silent for some time, and she was beginning to think she’d been wrong about this whole endeavor by the time the other noble spoke suddenly:
“The philosophers.” His voice held a quiet satisfaction. “They’d never agree. If we were to get to them before he did, if she were to speak to them—”
“He’s already spoken to them.” The first voice sounded weary, but there was an old anger there. “And they backed it, in secret. I’m telling you, it’s already done.”
“You don’t believe that.” There was humor in the first voice. He was younger—quite young, Alleyne might say, though the affect of boredom and cynicism made him seem older at first.
“I do.”
“No, you don’t. You wouldn’t have come here, much less with me, if you believed that.”
There was a long pause.
“You must have thought of something,” the second voice said persuasively.
“Can I trust you?” The first man spoke bluntly.
“Of course.” It was spoken almost insolently.
The silence this time was stony.
“Have I not proved you can trust me?” The second voice was angry now. “Do you not have the evidence to damn me a dozen times over?”
“Hmm.” The owner of the first voice considered. “Very well, then. I’m told he’ll hear no argument on the idea of it, but the execution … that’s another matter. I’d stake my reputation that he can’t find a common born girl without a stain on her honor. Every one of them will have secrets.”
A common born girl? Alleyne frowned over at Almeric, who shrugged in bewilderment. They both leaned their heads closer to the floor, as if hearing the words more clearly might make them make more sense as well.
“The merchants watch their children like hawks,” the second voice pointed out.
“He won’t want a merchant’s get.”
“Are you sure? If he claims it’s for the purposes of good governance…” The second voice was fairly dripping with contempt.
“I’m telling you, he wants some farmer’s daughter. A fisher girl. A potter. Someone pure, untainted by the court.”
Alleyne frowned. There was no possible way they could mean…
The second man snorted. “The court’d eat a girl like that alive. Anyone with a gold coin would have her in their pocket, did he never think of that?”
“He will, if we help him see it,” the first said smoothly.
There was a pause.
“Ah,” the second one said quietly.
“We’ll let the rest of them bring in pretty girls from their holdings and parade them under his nose, and we’ll find out just what each of them has done. Stolen grain in a short season? Cheated the merchants?”
“And thus, that truthspeaker of his finally comes in useful,” the second voice said. “It’ll be easy enough to persuade him that there’s nothing to fear by having a look inside their minds.”
“Yes, indeed.” The first voice sounded almost smug. He seemed to be waiting for the other man to say something more. When he did not, the voice spoke sharply: “I need to know you’re with me.”
“I’m with you.” The second voice spoke slowly, distractedly, as if assuring the first of his loyalty was hardly the greatest of his worries just now. “But any man with marriage in his sights can be tempted by a pretty face. What if he falls in love?”
“The palace is a dangerous place.” The threat was delivered without any emotion at all. “Anything is worth it to keep Aiqasal out of the hands of some baseborn populist.”
“You know, I’d often wondered if that was a weapon in your arsenal.”
“I never do it unless I need to.”
“And how often is that, I wonder?”
When the first voice spoke again, it was deathly quiet: “We won’t start there—never start there, it’s always a risk. It’s worth one last attempt to see if we can turn his head before the proclamation goes out. I doubt it, of course. And we need to find whoever gave him the fool idea in the first place.”
“Mmm. And your other plans?”
“We shall see.” The first voice had a quelling tone to it. “He’s always been unpredictable, and we’ve always been able to use that.”
Almeric was tugging at her cloak urgently, no matter how Alleyne shook her head, and finally she pushed herself up and followed him with slow, light footsteps, dropping off the edge of the roof and onto the building beside it with a muffled gasp at the impact.
“What?” she hissed when they were away.
“That’s our way in.” His hands were on her shoulders.
“What is?”
“Did you not hear them?” His eyes were wide. There was a smile on his lips. “It’s better than we dreamed, Alleyne. He wants a common-born wife, the Emperor wants a common-born wife.”
“But…” Alleyne froze. No. No, it wasn’t possible.
“We have a way in,” he said quietly. “You.”
Chapter Four
“Absolutely not,” Alleyne repeated, for what felt like the hundredth time. It seemed like the only thing she was capable of saying. She had stormed home with Almeric at her heels, determinedly not listening as he tried to plead his case.
“But why not?” he asked now. There was a helpless frustration growing in his voice. This was their golden opportunity; so he said, and so he clearly believed. His incredulity that Alleyne was questioning him at all was matched by shock that she could question this, of all plans.
Alleyne had never known herself to be so vehement. In truth, she was as surprised as Almeric. She leaned back against the mud-brick wall and tried to think of something to say, anything. She could see a sliver of the moon out of the tiny window in their rooms. Often, the sight lulled her to sleep as she lay on her thin pallet, and she rubbed at her eyes. She was desperately tired, but she knew she could not sleep if she tried.
&n
bsp; Her brother was making a show of looking out the window, rubbing at the sore muscles in his arms and neck. His work tunic was smudged from their day’s labors of unloading cargo from one of the merchant ships that had come up the river. He might be shocked, but he knew better—having a brother’s sense about such things—than to push her, order her. He pretended not to watch her. Still, when she drew breath to speak, she saw his instant alertness and knew he was not distracted in the slightest.
She chose her words carefully. If she didn’t, she had the sense that she would shatter into little pieces like glass. There were no words for the terror that had gripped her at the thought of this plan, and the panic still threatened to swamp her. A single careless word could undo her completely. “There are a dozen things that could go wrong.” Her voice was very quiet.
“No more than in our other plan.” His answer was so quick that she knew he had been waiting for this objection.
Alleyne was surprised by the laugh that burst out of her. The voice didn’t even sound like her own, it was so bitter. “Oh? What if someone recognizes me?”
To his credit, he sobered at once. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
She gave him a look of disgust. How could he have missed that one, most important point? After they come to court from their family’s estates, they had been raised with the other scions of the nobility. How many of the other children might recognize them, even after so many years? Almeric often said that Alleyne was the very image of their mother. She had thought it a pretty lie—but what if he wasn’t lying?
She repented of her anger a moment later. It had been her idea to stay in the city, yes, but it had been Almeric who had been responsible for their survival for years. Half his mind was always on the next day’s work, on finding the money to pay for their rooms, mend their clothes … Of course he might not have seen all the dangers of this at once.
He pushed himself away from the wall and took a seat by the low table they used for studying any book they could lay their hands on. Neither of them had lit a lantern when they returned and now he went about the business of it methodically, making no comment on the precious oil he would be burning. “Do you think the prospective brides would be shown to the court?” he asked at last. His voice was impersonal, almost distant—the way they always spoke of their plan.